


Smear

by danceswithoutwolves



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: M/M, why did i do this to myself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-13
Updated: 2015-06-13
Packaged: 2018-04-04 04:24:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4125390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/danceswithoutwolves/pseuds/danceswithoutwolves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nux and Slit explore the desert. Things ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smear

They like to take rides sometimes. Nux fangs it, engine thrumming and roaring with the wind that billows past them, while Slit drapes himself across the hood of the car. How they tear across the desert salt, explore the void of the wasteland in its clawing silence. Austere the sun glares down, golden, and if they manage to slip from the Citadel past sunset the moon’s brilliance gleams in their eyes, shiny and chrome.

On this particular voyage, Slit found an excuse to leave just as the sun was tugged down to embrace the horizon, and since Nux has maneuvered them away from all roads and signs of humanity, he has not torn his eyes from the sky, enthralled to witness violet and crimson and blazing orange seep into the sky like blood. Slit rests his head on his hands, propped up on his elbows as his splayed legs dangle over the edge of the hood. He faces away from the sun into the constellations and their inky blanket, and Nux would chide him—the stars are always there, the same every night, and sunsets die so rapid, never to be repeated—but the fading rays brush his back in just such a way as to illuminate his scars quite nicely. The pale filigrees writhe upward from his belt, and above them stretches smooth muscle: all bathed in gentle gold. 

That such a sight strikes him as splendid causes unease to snake through his gut, as a War Boy should not notice beauty. His life is fire and rage and blood and it is ugly; but he rather finds the fire in molten sunrises, he finds the rage in every breath he draws against all odds, he finds the blood pulsing warm in his and Slit’s veins and thrumming at his throat. His half-life brims with beauty. Sometimes he wonders if the others see it too, if they pretend not to notice.

In the rear-view mirror looms the Citadel, arid and unforgiving as the land yawning around them, yet despite the precious water under Immortan Joe’s august fingertips and the torrid air now pressing against him and Slit, Nux breathes easier out here. His tumors don’t weigh as heavily on his neck. Slit feels it too, he thinks– the freedom in a breeze unhindered by stone walls, the lightness more than just dizziness from staring too long at the blistering sand.

“Hunting for scrap metal,” they had claimed, Nux bumping into Slit’s back in fermented excitement as the words wound their way from his lancer’s mouth. Organic had looked on from a few feet away, the jut of his lip and slight furrow of his brow setting Nux ill at ease for a moment; that expression has appeared more and more often as time has passed, and Nux, despite what some of his fellow War Boys choose to think, is no fool. He sees that look in between the rasping breaths of a warrior at the end of their half-life and he sees it, mocking him, behind his eyelids on the nights sleep dances out of his grasp. But regardless of how the gaze of the Organic Mechanic had seared into his neck, he found solace in the smirk playing across Slit’s lips, mischievous and beseeching as he spun his lies, yet evidently authentic enough for their superior to acquiesce to their request.

Despite possessing the social graces of a lizard, Slit has a way of gaining people’s favor.

With his mind on desert reptiles and their relative social merits, Nux nearly snorts as a two-headed lizard materializes from a dip in the sand ahead of them. Reaching a hand up to jerk open the sunroof—eyes locked on the animal, his fingers scramble a bit for the handle, but myriad mid-battle conversations have lent him a proclivity for blindly finding the thing—he opens it and yells to Slit: “Found a snack!”

Slit scarcely has time to push himself up into a crouch on the hood before Nux jams his foot on the brake, and thus the lancer goes flying off the Coupe. Sand flares up around his figure, settling limply about him as he lies still. The tranquility is short-lived, however; it begins with a twitch in his bicep and then his hips are shifting and his feet are digging into the scorching salt and all too soon he propels himself upwards, growling.

Aside the Slit-shaped dent in the sand scampers the lizard, halting behind one particularly large disturbance where Slit’s feet had violently assaulted the pristine surface of the salt. Cautiously it extends one of its forelimbs, probing the edge of the fissure, and, when it does not give way under the hefty duress of a lizard foot, scampers in as if Nux and Slit are some spectator event and it has scored a prime vantage point. Nux finds his pontification concerning the motives of the reptile interrupted when the rumbling noise emanating from his partner’s throat crescendos into something approaching the clangor of a war rig’s engine, and his hulking mass charges towards the car.

The last gossamers of sunlight that have managed to wriggle above the horizon land on Slit’s face in such a way as to illuminate his staples, and they cast spider-like shadows upon the planes of his face, augmenting as his lips break into a wicked grin. Reaching the Coupe, Slit slams his hands down on the hood, the corded muscle of his arms outlined in stark clarity: lancer’s arms. Nux forcibly draws strength from deep within himself to not burst out cackling, but his chapped lips twitch maddeningly nonetheless, chest quivering in likeness to the tremors preceding an earthquake.

But then Slit tilts his head to the side, eyes narrowing, and Nux _knows_ that look– he’s seen it piercing into enemy vehicles as Slit raises an arm up, taking aim; that look emerges and doom follows. Raising his eyebrows, Nux paws at a switch on his driver’s side door, and while he is jolted in his seat as every door locks itself violently, Slit does not budge, absorbing the shock in his arms. Nux revels in the affronted glare Slit levels at him.

A sharp intake of breath is all the warning he receives before Slit vaults atop the hood, metalwork on his belt flashing golden as it tosses the dying sunlight about, and he lunges for the open sunroof.

Giddy panic seizes Nux when he realizes the quite literally gaping hole in his plan, and he flings an arm in the general direction of the sunroof’s handle before a strong hand seizes his wrist; with a shit-eating grin plastered on his face Nux stares up at Slit, stars glittering and dancing in the falling darkness behind his friend’s head. As oddly angled shadows obscure Slit’s features, the twinkle in his eyes screaming _murder_ evades the detection of Nux, oh innocent Nux, who huffs out a gaudy laugh at the sand still fluttering off Slit’s skin. Some particles having deposited themselves onto his eyelashes, Nux crinkles an eye up, but as he does so the grip on his wrist slackens, Slit launches himself head first through the sunroof. Shrieking, Nux gropes at his door for the lock switch only to wind up with a lap full of Slit, and he thrashes around, allocating one arm towards shoving Slit away and one towards unlocking the doors to get the fresh hell out of there.

He can’t entirely wipe the smirk from his face.

Slit, despite landing sideways and promptly getting bucked around, rapidly rights himself, straddling Nux’s thighs and grabbing his flailing arms to pin them on either side of his torso. Somehow during the entire ordeal, Nux has gradually slid down his seat until now, where his head rests at the level of Slit’s collarbone. Wriggling some more, he maneuvers himself into a position of greater dignity; he and Slit would see eye to eye were the latter not on top of him, gaining an advantage in height. Breathing heavily, Nux finally stills beneath his lancer, electrifyingly aware of the power in his arms, the strength in the thighs straddling, restraining his own; and the soft moonlight beginning to filter in sweeps across his jaw, brushing feather-light against the stitches and staples decorating savage lips. Silence hangs across them like the chasm between heartbeats.

Nux fractures it with tact: “Y’know, Slit, if you just trap us in here, we’re never gonna get to eat that lizard I saw.”

“Yeah?” Slit snarls in hoarse defiance, and drags his hands down Nux’s arms. He shifts in his lap, closer, and presses his forehead against Nux’s, not breaking eye contact; the gaze sears into Nux, makes him squirm beneath Slit. Around his waist Nux slips his arms to run over the muscles in his back, and in the wake of his fingertips Slit’s writhes, little twists of frustration, encouraging and ridiculously hot.

“ _Fuck_ the lizard,” he breathes against Nux’s lips.

“I’d rather fuck you,” fingernails dig into the small of Slit’s back, stinging over his scars, and Nux claims his mouth in a searing kiss. Teeth clash, bite, as the frenzied dusk air whips at them, as Nux digs his fingernails into Slit’s back. Breaking the kiss, Slit drops his head to Nux’s neck, pants lascivious against the ridiculously smooth skin and revels in how it flushes beneath his breath. Nux tips his head back to slam against the unforgiving fabric of the seat, mouth falling open to draw in ragged breaths that hitch when he feels teeth sink into the sensitive skin of his neck, sharp and burning and exquisitely feral.

He slides a hand down Slit’s back, feels the shivers in its wake; at the thin wires of metal snaking across Slit’s belt he tugs, letting their jagged edges drag into his fingertips. Languidly he leans forward, arches his pale chest into Slit’s and relishes the contact, the sensation of Slit’s scars against his own; his arms grip Slit about the waist in a vicious embrace, winding tighter, rougher. Incisors flashing in an impish grin, he brings his mouth to rest against the shell of Slit’s ear, but before he can speak, the words catch in his throat.

His eyes have lit upon the lizard, still perched in the foot-hole imprinted in the sand. It… _watches_ them. Watches them with its four disturbingly beady eyes.

“Oh, gods. Slit. Slit!” an undignified voice crack accompanies his final cry of Slit’s name, though Nux has already crossed the event horizon of shame: discovering a voyeuristic reptile observing you and your lancer doing things to each other tends to produce such an effect.

“What?”

“That lizard’s staring at us,” he whispers urgently. His eyes prickle at the night breeze wafting through the sunroof, but the fine motor control necessary to blink evades him, all mental capacities directed towards reconciling the fact that _a lizard nearly witnessed him shove a hand down Slit’s pants._

Slit twists around in his lap, squinting out at the sand; it is evident when he spots the lizard, as his grip on Nux’s arm constricts, grimy nails digging little red crescents into his bicep. Once more he vaults through the sunroof, leaving Nux’s lap considerably cooler than when his bulk had occupied it. With a huff, Nux’s unlocks the car—fingers finding the switch with far greater surety now that he is able to focus on locating it rather than preventing Slit from mauling him—and steps out of the Coupe to lean against the battle-worn door.

 

By the time Slit finally seizes the lizard, powdered hands entrapping its thrashing body, the last gossamers of sunlight have dissipated as ink in water; fragile and ephemeral, sinking gradually into the glassy night. The moon crowns his triumph, chrome light floods air saturated with the thrill of the chase, the hunt exhilarating no matter how tiny the creature hunted. His staples glint and gleam, the planes of his scarred face glowing an ethereal white, and he brings the struggling beast to his mouth. Into scaly flesh the warrior’s teeth rip, sanguinary, wolf-like and yet even more visceral still as the blood trickles in a crimson stream from his lips, shimmering in the pale moonlight.

Once half the lizard remains—the bottom half, as Nux never could bring himself to eat the head (or heads)—Slit jerks its ruined body from his lips, running a hand over his chin to clear away the blood. He grips it by the limp tail, and it swings obscenely with each stride he takes towards Nux. However, as he approaches his friend to offer him the snack, something simmering in those blue eyes, something almost sad, mottled by the flecks of starlight whirling in them, gives him pause.

Hollowly Nux stares at his reflection in the window: the silver radiance that caresses his skin mockingly, the livid way it illuminates the lumps on his neck. They’ve grown since last he dared look at them, though he cannot say when that was; as a habit he avoids all things reflective: he already knows the contours and colors of his face, and he knows the tumors are there, so what purpose does further examining these things serve? At least if he doesn’t see them he might feign ignorance. But on those dread nights when the wind howls as it lashes furious against the rocky pillars of the Citadel, sending shivers careening down his spine, and he hears his own wheezing breaths rise above the clamor, pretense shatters; panic sets in, the breaths coming viscous and jagged to clot in his windpipe. And when Organic’s stares bore into him as a death-knell, each successive one ticking down the end of his half-life inexorably hurtling towards him, the dividing line between phantasm and the solidity of the tumors smears. He cannot tell whether those looks or the tumors themselves gnaw at him, tear him to shreds. So acrid now the feeling burns and roils in his gut, twists through his heart.

Frowning, Slit haphazardly tosses what remains of the lizard onto the Coupe’s hood and bumps into Nux’s shoulder with his own, jolting the slighter boy. “What?” he asks gruffly, voice slipping through the air like gravel, crackling against Nux’s skin, and he wants to answer but the words do not come; they crumble and die upon his lips. Helplessly his eyes flit back to the reflection he so reviles, and he cannot find the strength to throw up some veneer of nonchalance while those sickening lumps glare up at him.

Slit simply observes him, brow creasing further as he follows Nux’s line of sight. Stepping between Nux and the window, he flings open the car door and bends over to run his fingers under the steering wheel as Nux looks on in confusion. Dark grease slicks his fingertips once he resurfaces, backing out of the car and slamming the door with his hip, and he eyes his fingers appraisingly before curling them all into his palm, aside from his pinkie.

Purposefully, Slit strides forward to snake one hand about the back of Nux’s neck, anchoring him. Every so lightly Slit taps his blackened pinkie against the larger of the two tumors: once, twice, and drags the grease in an arc below. Never having mustered the courage to touch the marred flesh himself, Nux is left stricken by the sensation; the contact feels unlike that upon his shoulders or stomach or hands, unlike that upon any other region of his body, yet it is not the abhorrent, biting feeling he anticipated. Slit repeats the motion on the other tumor before releasing him.

Nux turns to the car window once more, searching the reflection, and finds two smiley faces drawn unskillfully on his tumors, endearing for all their asymmetry and slight smudges. Involuntarily the corners of his lips twitch upward as some ineffable emotion floods through him; not relief, certainly not unbridled happiness, as a maudlin undercurrent yet runs quivering through his veins, but he feels… warm.

“I’m namin’ this one Larry,” Slit nudges the larger smiley face suddenly.

“I’ll call him Barry” Nux says after a pause, pointing at the smaller one. A watery smile flickers across his lips, and he hauls Slit into a scorching kiss.

Larry and Barry. They will be his undoing but damn everything if they will not be his salvation in this one glittering instant. For all the glory arisen of a fiery demise and the vast expanse of Valhalla’s resplendent gates, far more than dying with cool metal under his pallid fingertips, he’d rather look fate square in the eye, shoulder to shoulder with Slit under the stars, greasy smiles painted onto his skin.

For the time being, though, Nux is content to claw at Slit’s back while Slit leaves smeared fingerprints along his hipbone, a driver and his lancer entwined out in the moonlit wasteland.

**Author's Note:**

> These war boyfriends have ensnared my soul and I don't think they'll be letting go any time soon. I had a very particular headcanon about how Larry/Barry/the smiley faces came about, and so this happened! Hope it was mildly enjoyable ~ You can find me on tumblr @ grabsthesun :D
> 
> EDIT: Now featuring some lovely fanart by the incredibly talented [inkyako](http://grabsthesun.tumblr.com/post/121431692884/inkyako-grabsthesun-wrote-a-thing-this)!


End file.
